A video from @robbiejandik_carsandcastles, filmed in Las Vegas, Nevada, documents an auction lot that sounds made up until you see it on camera, captioned “PT 3: buying a tank, Mystery Machine, and 6×6 ‼️ #cars #viral #edit #reels #funny.” The clip has pulled in 45,200 likes, 104 comments, and 531 shares.
Bidding on a tank at a civilian auction sounds like it should be illegal, but the legal reality is more nuanced, and it hinges almost entirely on whether the main gun still works. According to SlashGear, private citizens can legally own a decommissioned tank as long as the cannon has been rendered inoperable and the owner doesn’t possess ammunition for it; these non-firing tanks are exactly what tends to show up at higher-end specialty auctions like the one in this clip. Crucially, the engine and treads on a demilitarized tank can still be fully functional, meaning a buyer really can drive one on private property once the deal closes, and a handful of states even permit limited road use if the treads have been rubberized to avoid tearing up pavement.
The calculus changes completely for a buyer who wants a tank with a working cannon rather than a display piece. SlashGear reports that owning a fully functional tank, gun included, requires a federally issued Destructive Device permit, a process that involves licensing and background checks regardless of the buyer’s military background, and even then the cannon can only legally be fired under extremely specific, tightly controlled circumstances. That’s an entirely different ownership experience than the kind of decommissioned hardware typically sold at the sort of auction shown here, where the appeal is clearly more about owning an outrageous piece of history than about operating a live weapons platform.
What makes this particular lot remarkable isn’t just the tank, it’s the range of vehicles bundled alongside it. A replica Mystery Machine van and a six-wheel-drive truck sitting next to a demilitarized tank is the kind of auction inventory that draws bidders who have nothing in common except a shared appetite for the unusual, from military vehicle collectors to prop and pop-culture buyers to people who simply want the most conversation-starting vehicle in any parking lot they pull into. Whatever this buyer ends up doing with the lot, the auction itself is a reminder that “weird” and “legal” aren’t mutually exclusive when it comes to owning genuinely oddball machines.
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